The next day began quietly. Bea, who had been awake with the sunrise every day since Alex died, slept late. She didn’t stir when Dan got up and tiptoed out of the room. He took his clothes, and his laptop, and washed in the bathroom across the corridor, so as not to disturb her. She needed her sleep. Then, down in the hall, he opened up the computer and googled Alex Adamson, Death. He wanted to save her from being surprised again. No, not just that. Now that he knew it was in the papers, he felt compelled to look. He wanted to see how other people saw his wife’s family, and if there were any pictures of Bea. The other papers had all got hold of what the Mail had started, but there was nothing new. The same pictures rehashed the same story, verbatim. But, in the sidebar, old articles about Griff. Dan felt a pornographic shame, clicking through to find the things she’d never told him. He had googled her when they met. He didn’t feel bad about that. This was different. He hadn’t dug before. He’d checked her out, seen a little bit about Griff, and moved on. Now, hunched over his laptop, in the hall because it was nearest to the router, he delved. Before he’d known Bea well, he had more respect for her privacy. Now her past felt like it was his to plunder, her father’s anyway. He saw Griff’s other companies, besides Hemisphere, reports of bankruptcies declared and forgotten, and new companies, and a defunct petition against him. He even saw a picture of the private jet. He read the articles, quickly, skimming, listening out for Bea, like he was going through her things behind her back. He hadn’t checked so carefully before. He’d seen her father was a businessman, he hadn’t looked that far. He had fallen in love with her before he knew about all the money she resolutely would not take. She had stood out, the first time he laid eyes on her, at the Bussey. She wasn’t beautiful. He had often wondered exactly what it was that made her shine to him. He assumed it was her soul, that was what he had always believed, that just like in the movies, love had put a spotlight on her. Now it occurred to him that perhaps it was her money that gave her presence in a room, even in its absence. The idea scared him. He realized he had always felt proud of picking her out, as if he had seen a more important beauty. He was glad he hadn’t known. It shouldn’t make a difference. He told himself it didn’t make a difference. As Bea always said, it was her father’s money, not hers. They had agreed. It was ironic that the starter money, the guilt money that got them their mortgage on the flat, was from his dad. He’d never thought to question it. She didn’t judge him for taking money from his absent, married, lying father, arguably just as dirty as the money from hers, but she wouldn’t touch a penny of Griff’s riches. Nothing. There was just one picture of Bea that he could see, in Getty Images, with a diagonal stamp across it to keep the copyright. It was a photograph from someone’s millennium garden party. Property developer Griff Adamson, and wife, Olivia, with their three children, Edward (18), Alexander (16) and Beatrice (9). Griff had one arm around the shoulders of his eldest, Ed, and his other around Liv’s waist. She was wearing something Grecian-looking, with long, boho hair. She looked like a perfume commercial. Alex was between Liv and Bea, and holding Bea’s hand. Bea was grinning, broadly, like a school photo, her legs planted, sturdily, and Alex was looking off to one side, with his eyes half closed, so you couldn’t tell anything about him, except that he was uncomfortable, awkward in himself. Of the five of them, he looked like the marked one, it seemed obvious. Or did he just look tragic, now the worst had happened? It felt strange to see Bea as a child. There was something sick about it. Partly because she wasn’t a pretty child. He didn’t know if it would have been sicker if she’d been pretty, and thought maybe it would. But he felt bad for her. She just looked plain, and dumpy, and much too keen and cheerful for the surroundings, like she was consciously making the best of it. He didn’t know why it made him feel so bad, her sunniness, her cheer. He heard her footsteps on the stairs, and slammed the laptop shut.